But why hasn't there been any progress? Why, after spending tens of billions of dollars on research is cancer still a death sentence for more than half a million Americans every year? Why is the death rate for cancer higher today than it was in 1950? Like so many things, in the end it's all about money and power.

In the coming budget year, the National Cancer Institute will spend over $4.1 billion on cancer research13. That's almost $1.2 billion more than the agency spent in 199714. Of this money, fully one-third will be for "non-competitive" grants, money doled out to researchers favored by NCI no matter what their relative merit15. Even where grants are competitive, they are just competitive in a financial sense. Only researchers well accepted by the "cancer establishment" need apply.

While the NCI claims that it is looking into alternative and complimentary therapies for cancer treatment the figures suggest otherwise. Congressional sources estimate that total expenditures for alternative cancer therapies in 1999 amounted to about $20 million out of that year's $3.2 billion NCI budget, a figure too small to even warrant a line in the agency's budget16

But research grants are just the tip of the iceberg.

The real jackpot is in treatment. According to Senator Bill Frist, Americans spent $104 billion on doctors, hospitals and drugs to treat cancer in 199916. This is more than twice the roughly $41 billion spent on cancer treatment just six years ago18. Is there any wonder that the cancer establishment has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo? Is there any doubt that it would ruthlessly persecute anyone it viewed as a threat to its power and privilege? Sitting in that Baltimore courtroom with my husband, I was gaining an all too personal insight into just how far the cancer establishment would go to silence dissident voices.

The irony is that for most of my life, like most Americans, I had faith in organized medicine. In fact, when I had to go to work after high school, before my father died, my first job was in a doctor's office for a group of obstetricians and gynecologists. It was a job I loved. I found dealing with expectant mothers on a daily basis an uplifting and joyful experience. Welcoming new babies into the world is a life-affirming event. It reminds us that there is always hope for the future.

In such an environment, my faith in traditional medicine might never have been shaken but for one thing; in my early forties I developed fibromyalgia, a debilitating degenerative muscle and connective tissue disease.

Even now, it is hard to look back at the devastating effect the disease had on my life. It hit at a time when, after years of struggle, everything seemed to be going so well. I had long since established a successful business career, first with a major corporation and then as an independent businesswoman. I had a successful second marriage to a wonderful man, and had just given birth to my first child. Everything seemed perfect.